Yep, I agree with you on this one...

I also think it was a dumb idea, and I'm probably one of the few people who actually downloaded it and tried it out for a while at different stages of development. I gave it a chance because I wanted so much to believe that all of the time and money Lorne was sinking into it was well spent.

The "crowd reaction" function was an interesting idea, I'll give them that. Could have done without the simulated audience though. I think a function like that would do well in a similar service like Livestream, even though most people voice their opinions in real-time anyway via the chat window.

Tinychat does the whole 'watching a youtube video together' thing now.

btw, I've read somewhere that Lorne studied photorealistic painting, is this right? Is there any of his work online?

I played around with it too but I got bored of it very very quickly. can't say I tested it a different stages of development so I might have missed the best parts.

Ouch this takes me back:
http://www.oddworldforums.net/showthread.php?t=10602

It might be way too late to suggest this, but if there's one Mudokon left or there's no Mudokons left in the game, then this song should play.

Revive!

It's ALIVE!

Continuing from the E3 thread:..
I am FOR the swinging spikey boulders. No spikey boulders + Quiksave = way too easy. Especially that late in the game.

Well there was a re-spawn point a screen away from each of the 2 puzzles in the first game. And the puzzles you had to do after navigating them were short and relatively easy... That made the glitches forgiveable for me. Not a lot was lost if the spike puzzle shafted me or if I got my timing wrong.

E: I remember there being much harder, similar puzzles in AE with having to roll under bonesaws where your timing window was incredibly narrow, except that quicksave nerfed their difficulty to make them a lot easier than the spiky ball & bat puzzle in AO.

I genuinely hated that puzzle with the doped up mudokons and those walls triggered by floor pads in AE. God damn that's an annoying fucking puzzle. Puzzle being used incredibly lightly.

I absolutely loved that! It was a nice bit of fun before you got to the final boiler level. It made the gameplay more dynamic, more varied. It was hilarious to play. You'd be running, almost through the barrier then BAMMM, it shuts on you and you're like 'shit!' You guys who're saying it's frustrating... jesus, games are meant to be challenging. You NEED to have these parts in games that feel unpassable. It makes you become better, it sets you up for the rest of the game. It creates a much bigger sense of achievement once you finally get through it!

I know someone at work, he spends all his time just playing video games. It's like he wants to get a game over and done with and just move onto the next one. When some of you are moaning about how some of the challenges are frustrating, and to be honest here some of you are complaining about pretty easy situations sometimes, I imagine you want to rush through the game, just to be done with it.

The doped up mudokons puzzle was good, and one of the funniest parts of AE - Only reason it may have been annoying to some was because the mudokons were unpredictable unless you were careful with your movements.

See, I like puzzles like that - They can teach you a lot about patience. IMO it's fine to make something challenging as a way to increase playtime, so long as they're fair to the player.

There's a difference between challenging and frustrating. There was little or no control or logic to those puzzles and I would often find myself getting through them quicker thanks to sheer luck and guesswork than actually trying to work through them.

It wasn't fun or funny at all. It was fucking annoying and felt like it was interrupting me and slowing down my gameplay.

For once I agree with Connell, I sometimes get through that puzzle in 30 seconds by accident where as other times it takes five minutes of careful manipulation and patience. It's bad level design if you run out of puzzles and just throw something in which takes little thought.

What about that situation where you turn a wheel and sand falls on mudokons and they start slapping each other to death and you gotta make your way to them and comfort them before they all kill each other..

Frustrating or challenging?

Fun!

It's pretty much a puzzle with a (generous) time limit. At least it isn't arbitrary and gives you a reason.

I enjoyed watching them die

It was fun to do that deliberately to the group of mudokons after Aslik's office at the end of Feeco. :P

Challenging the first time. Easy after I learned to call out 'Stop it'.

Seriously, I never had any issue with that one. If they redo AE it should definately be kept.

For me one always slaps another mudokon after I've yelled 'stop it' so I have to run all the way back and actually get in the way of the mudokons to break the chain.

It's been a long while since I played AE, but I think you can just call out 'Stop it' multiple times and they'll eventually stop.

Does anyone remember which level this was in? I'd like to check it out.

Is anyone else bothered by the overall derpiness of the Scrabs..?
Maybe I'm used to the polished look and overall ferocity of the original..but there's just something very, very off putting about the scrab model in the end of the trailer. I certainly hope this footage was from an earlier build :S

It was in the Brewery.

I'm bothered by it. It's true, they look weaker. Scrabs as I know them (from the original 2 Abe games) look very well built. They stand with pride, with an authoritative posture.

Erm, I didnt say this at the time, but about 10 posts ago I mentioned that I'd only just realised that Scrabs are based on (s)crabs. I came to realise this because I was looking at probably that exact same image of the scrab in one of the new n tasty screenshots as you are referring to, MeechCrunchies. And what I saw was that the scrab model seems to have too much flex in its body. I imagined their bodies should move more like as if their skin were made of a harder substance like crabshell, so, less flex, more localised movement/pivoting at the joints.

I absolutely disagree. They are vertebrates, not calcareous arthropods.

I always thought of Scrabs as walls of hard muscle, and less like a crab.

http://www.gamechronicles.com/guides/exoddus/scrab3.jpg

You can see the creases/tightness of its muscles as well as the bulging veins.

Bear in mind we have seen butchery diagrams as well as concept art that show both paramites and scrabs as having internal skeletons.

I wasn't saying their skin IS shell. I was saying their motion should be more confined to their joints as if their bodies were made of like a shell substance, after having seen the overly flexible-looking scrab in the New n Tasty screenshot that looks too rubbery.

Edit: Yeah Jordan, they're definately very muscular creatures.

Back to MeechCrunchie's point I was attempting to answer: "Is anyone else bothered by the overall derpiness of the Scrabs..?
Maybe I'm used to the polished look and overall ferocity of the original..but there's just something very, very off putting about the scrab model in the end of the trailer. I certainly hope this footage was from an earlier build :S"

LATE EDIT: I take back what I say about the model being too flexible. Looking at the video, the scrab's upper body looks really sturdy, but the still image i saw made it look too flexible, and twisty.

I just replayed part of the brewery and confirmed that the following is correct:



As I was playing it, I had a thought about NnT. One thing that always bugged me about the whilstling puzzles in Paramonia and Scrabania is that you need to sit and listen to the Mudokon slowly giving you the entire pattern before giving it back. That's annoying if you've died and have to redo it multiple times or when you have to get multiple spirit rings. Can you please allow us to cut the mud off and give the password without first listening to it?

In the case of spirit rings, it might also be nice to only have to give him the password once and after that he just gives them freely. (Unless that would somehow mess some of the puzzles up? I haven't played AO for a while...)

Isn't that how it works in AO already?

No, you have to give the password each time. But seconded on the previous two suggestions, that'd improve things a little also for people who enjoy the game enough to replay it a few times.

I remember that part. As far as I know it was the only timed challenge regarding character's emotions. It relied on spamming "Stop it!" and other phrases in order to get them to stop hitting each other. I really liked some of the parts involving the angry mudokons pulling levers. Imagine someone being so pissed off that they just don't give a heck what they're doing. It's very clever.

For me the most frustrating thing were the sligs in the background (like at the barracks in the target shooting range) and those anti-chanting orbs (but I understand why they were placed there, it would be too easy otherwise).

I thought so too- if you die, you have to give the password again. Otherwise, if you just return to the screen again, I thought you get the rings automatically.

I agree with Nate also, being able to cut off the Mudokons and save some time if you know a password off by heart would be great. I always found it a bit tedious listening to the longer passwords multiple times, especially when I got impatient and started replying a bit too soon, and had to wait again :p

No, you're getting confused with the Mudokons later on in the game that just give you spirit rings as soon as you enter the screen.

Hi, everyone! This is just a quick post to check in and introduce myself. I'm Matt, the new designer working on New 'N' Tasty.

I've been looking through this thread to try and get a feel for what you all consider to be the most important aspects of the original game. I'm a big fan myself and there's a lot of overlap with the things I personally value in AO, to be honest.

I noticed atmosphere was one particularly important point of discussion. While it is a frustratingly vague thing to pin down and describe, it would certainly be something that sticks out to fans like a sore thumb when it's not right.

The deep atmosphere and storysense of the original AO was what made me fall in love with it in the first place, so I'll do my best to help convey that rich feeling in New 'N' Tasty, along with all the other nuances and complexities of the game.

Hope you're all as excited about this game as I am!

Sounds good to me. Welcome to the forum and thanks for the personal approach to the community.

Hi! Nice pixel art avatar! Is it from a game, or did you make it yourself?